ible throughout:

----feel ye there
What _Reynolds_ felt, when first the Vatican
Unbarr'd her gates, and to his raptur'd eye
Gave all the god-like energy that flow'd
From _Michael's_ pencil; feel what _Garrick_ felt,
When first he breath'd the soul of _Shakspeare's_ page.

Sir Joshua, in his will, bequeaths his then supposed portrait of Milton
to Mr. Mason.

Mr. Gray thus observes of Mason, when at Cambridge:--"So ignorant of the
world and its ways, that this does not hurt him in one's opinion; so
sincere and so undisguised, that no mind with a spark of generosity
would ever think of hurting him, he lies so open to injury; but so
indolent, that if he cannot overcome this habit, all his good qualities
will signify nothing at all."

Mr. Mason, in 1754, found a patron in the Earl of Holderness, who
presented him with the living of _Aston_, in Yorkshire. This sequestred
village was favourable to his love of poetry and picturesque scenery;
which displayed itself at large in his English Garden, and was the
foundation of his lasting friendship with Mr. Gilpin, who to testify his
esteem, dedicated to him his _Observations on the Wye_. A biographer of
the late Mr. Shore, of Norton Hall, (the friend of Priestley), thus
mentions _Aston_:--"That truly conscientious, and truly learned and
excellent man, Mr. Lindsey, spent a whole week in this neighbourhood. He
was during that time the guest of his friend Mr. Mason, who was residing
on his rectory at _Aston_, the biographer of Gray, and one whose taste,
gave beauty, and poetry, celebrity, to that cheerful village." His
friendship for Mr. Gray, terminated only with the life of the latter. In
1770 Mr. Mason was visited at Aston, for the last time, by him. His last
letter to Mr. Mason was from Pembroke-hall, in May, 1771, and on the
31st of the next month, and at that place, this sublime genius paid the
debt of nature. The following epitaph was written by Mr. Mason, and
inscribed on the monument in Westminster Abbey:

No more the Grecian muse unrivall'd reigns;
To Britain let the nations homage pay:
She felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains,
A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray.

He farther evinced his attachment to this elegant scholar by publishing
his poems and letters, to which he prefixed memoirs of him. He commences
the third book of his English Garden with an invocation to his memory,
and records, in loft